A novel perspective of contact-area-dependent adhesive wear mechanism of metals and the theoretical predictions

DK Zhang and CLY Liu and CT Liu and HJ Xu and PF Shi and C Xiao and W Wang and Y Wang, WEAR, 571, 205864 (2025).

DOI: 10.1016/j.wear.2025.205864

Nanoscale metal adhesive wear dominates the damage of ultra-precision contact devices. Current macroscopic wear laws fail to describe wear behavior at nanoscale. The mechanism of metal adhesive wear at nanoscale as well as the theoretical prediction model are poorly understood yet, thus impeding nanoscale metal material development. In order to tackle those pending issues, molecular dynamics simulation was employed to study the nanoscale adhesive wear mechanisms of self-mated golds in a single-asperity contacting/separation process which is the most fundamental process in actual wear behaviors. Simulation results reveal that the shape of wear debris is an inwardly concave cone with almost equal debris height and debris radius at the same temperature. Furthermore, the contact area is a decisive factor affecting the adhesive wear of gold. Inspired by the above findings, we propose an adhesive wear model for metals by using the contact area to estimate the cone volume. The proposed model shows very good agreements with the simulation results of gold with different crystal orientations and various applied loads, far beyond our expectations.

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